Third Party > Repairing and Upgrading Rockbox Capable Players
iriver H340 with 240GB drive - success!
pwhodges:
After muttering from time to time about the possibility of this upgrade, I decided to go for it. Here are details of what I did (but without the failed experiments).
I bought a Toshiba MK2431GAH 240GB drive from rapidrepair.com, ignoring the dire warnings about it only ever working in a particular iPod; it arrived very quickly indeed (4.5 days from order, across the Atlantic), and the courier didn't collect VAT (17.5% tax, usually with the addition of a handling charge from the courier) off me either!
I used the only ZIF adapter that fits in the H300 series (because there is no leeway at all in the disk length) - this can be got through this forum, see http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=21676.msg157028#msg157028.
I have acquired a collection of updated H300 bootloaders that various people have published briefly; the one I used is r17607M-080522, but I now have no idea who made it (you can download it here, at your own risk, etc, etc). Of course, I updated installed the bootloader before taking the old disk out! (Later comment) On some H300s this firmware hangs during boot. I have one on which this never happens, and another on which it happens about one time in five; I just reset and try again.
I followed the instructions for compiling Rockbox using cygwin, which got me a working compilation in under an hour from starting. I then added:
--- Code: ---#define HAVE_LBA48
#define MAX_PHYS_SECTOR_SIZE 4096
--- End code ---
to the file rockbox\firmware\export\config\iriverh300.h to make a version for the 240GB disk, and compiled that with no problem. (Later comment) This is not necessary since v3.6; these changes are now included by default.
With the bootloader updated installed and the new disk installed, the H300 went into bootloader USB mode without a problem. Windows XP saw it as the 240GB disk it is, and the Disk Manager correctly initialised and partitioned it. I used my favourite disk manipulation program, DFSee (not free - sorry), to format the partition in FAT32, as Windows won't format a disk of that size as FAT32. (People often recommend the free Swissknife for this, but I have only ever had it crash, on multiple systems.)
I then, without even rebooting, copied my newly compiled .rockbox folder and a few music files onto the new disk for testing. The upgraded system rebooted as if nothing had happened, and worked fine. It is now copying my entire music library across, and I will report when this gets past the 137GB (128GiB) boundary... (possibly sometime tomorrow!).
[edit:] This disk is loading as slowly as the Samsung 120GB I have, which took over 24 hours to fill. I had hoped that setting the MAX_PHYS_SECTOR_SIZE parameter would help, but it seems not. Maybe I should play with the MAX_LOG_SECTOR_SIZE parameter as well? (I am loading using the main firmware, not bootloader USB mode, so it is my compiled version that is in use.)
Paul
gevaerts:
the H300 uses a hardware USB-ATA bridge, so rockbox can't do much about USB speed. However, have you tried building without defining MAX_PHYS_SECTOR_SIZE? In theory that one shouldn't be needed, and might even slow things down (in rockbox itself).
pwhodges:
Can you explain what MAX_PHYS_SECTOR_SIZE (and MAX_LOG_SECTOR_SIZE) are expected to do, then?
The reason I tried MAX_PHYS_SECTOR_SIZE is that I have a Toshiba 120GB drive and a Samsung 120GB drive, and the Samsung is much slower than the Toshiba 120GB, just as the 240GB Toshiba is turning out to be (it looks like it'll take nearly three days to load everything as it stands). So the speed limitation is in the disk access, not the USB speed; I haven't measured it, but it's slower by a factor of 3 or 4 I reckon. The common thing about the Samsung and the bigger Toshiba is that they both have 4kB physical sector size, so I hoped that code that recognised that might be more efficient.
I am willing to experiment a bit if anyone has any suggestions - but I'll probably wait until my music library has finished copying first... It would be nice to get it going just right, especially as this disk is probably the end of the line for (P)ATA (all Toshiba's newer disks are SATA).
Paul
(later)
Or does having a hardware USB-ATA bridge mean that disk writing via USB doesn't actually use the rockbox disk driver at all, so we can't influence it?
GodEater:
--- Quote from: pwhodges on March 17, 2010, 04:41:28 AM ---Or does having a hardware USB-ATA bridge mean that disk writing via USB doesn't actually use the rockbox disk driver at all?
--- End quote ---
Correct.
gevaerts:
--- Quote from: pwhodges on March 17, 2010, 04:41:28 AM ---Can you explain what MAX_PHYS_SECTOR_SIZE (and MAX_LOG_SECTOR_SIZE) are expected to do, then?
--- End quote ---
MAX_PHYS_SECTOR_SIZE enables rockbox to use physical sectors of more than 512 bytes for transferring data to and from the disk. Most modern large disks natively use 4K sectors, but nearly all of them also have a translation layer that allows them to work with traditional 512 byte sectors. Usually, the translation layer in the disk firmware is more efficient than the large sector support in rockbox, so if the disk supports it, it's often better to not use MAX_PHYS_SECTOR_SIZE.
For USB performance, you might want to have a look at http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/UDMAonUSB
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